Free The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado by John R. Erickson

sing.”
    His eyes widened and his beak twisted into an ugly snarl. “Sing! Why, that’s the ignertest thing you’ve said since the last ignert thing you said. Singin’ never helped anybody survive a cyclone, and besides all that, I don’t like music, never have.”
    Junior’s face broke into a big smile. “Y-y-yeah, but I j-just love to s-s-s-sing, P-pa.” He turned to me. “W-w-we’d j-just l-love to s-s-sing, love to sing, d-d-doggie.”
    Wallace grumbled to himself and turned his back on us. “We would not. It’ll be a cold snowy day in Brownsville when I sing with a dog, for crying out loud, in the middle of a cyclone! I never heard of such an ignert thing.”
    â€œOh c-c-c-come on, P-pa, d-d-don’t be s-such a g-g-grouch, such a grouch.”
    â€œI am a grouch, I’m proud to be a grouch, and I plan to be a grouch for the rest of my life, and anybody who don’t like it can go sit on a great big tack, is what he can do.”
    By then, I had come up with a compromise solution. “Tell you what, Wallace, the song I have in mind has four parts, so we need your voice. But you don’t have to sing pretty. You sing grouchy and we’ll sing pretty.”
    He whirled around. “Now, I might go for a deal like that, but I ain’t going to sing pretty or even try to sing pretty, because I ain’t a dainty little warbler . . .” He whirled back to Junior. “And neither are you, son, and you’d best remember who you are. We’re buzzards, son.”
    â€œUh, okay, P-pa.”
    â€œAnd buzzards ain’t warblers or little humming­birds.”
    â€œF-f-fine, P-pa.”
    â€œBuzzards is buzzards, and we’re proud of our Buzzardhood, and buzzards never sing pretty.”
    â€œUh, okay, f-f-fine, y-you b-b-bet, P-pa. S-s-start the s-s-song, d-d-doggie.”
    And with that . . . well, you’ll see.

Chapter Twelve: Wow, What a Great Ending!

    Y ou ever sing the kind of song that’s called a “round”?
    It’s a song that . . . hmmm, that’s kind of hard to describe, come to think of it. Everybody sings the same verse, don’t you see, but they come in at different times and somehow it all fits together.
    Examples? Okay, “Three Blind Mice” is one, and so is “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and so is “Why Doesn’t My Goose Sing as Well as Thy Goose.” And I’ll bet that at some time in your life, you’ve sung one of those songs as a round.
    And that’s what we did, only we spiffed it up. See, we started off singing “Why Doesn’t My Goose” as a round. Then we split up and each of us took a different song and we sang them ALL as a round, at the same time.
    Pretty impressive, huh? You bet it was. Old Mister Sour Puss took the “Goose” song, Junior took “Row Your Boat,” and Drover took “Three Blind Mice.”
    Never in all of history had two dogs and two buzzards attempted such an amazing musical fiasco in the middle of a tornado.
    Furthermore, whilst the other three guys were singing the other three songs in a round, I contributed snippets from . . . you’ll never guess and boy, will you be surprised . . .
    . . . from the “Hallelulia Chorus.”
    I told you you’d be shocked, stunned, speechless, impressed beyond description, and sure enough, you were.
    You should have heard it. In fact, you ought to hear it. It’s on the cassette tape version of this story.
    Anyways, it turned out to be a total knock-out song and we were all thrilled with it . . . everyone but Wallace, that is, who was determined to be unthrilled and unimpressed, but nobody cared what he thought anyway.
    We might have kept right on singing but for one small detail that you probably forgot: We were taking a ride on a runaway tornado, and all at once . . . something changed.
    Maybe the winds slacked off. Maybe the tornado went up